Leonard Boyarsky Interview

RPG Codex offers a retrospective interview with Fallout, Troika and now Diablo III designer and artist Leonard Boyarsky, about his career in the industry. About Troika’s last, cancelled project:

How far in development was Troika’s post-apocalyptic cRPG? Can you share some of the ideas you had for the story and setting, as well as for the game’s name? Did it represent the direction you wanted the Fallout license to take if Troika had gotten it?

We only had an engine demo, and were just starting to talk about some possible directions we could take the game when Troika closed its doors. We just knew we wanted to revisit the post-apocalyptic genre. Believe it or not, we really never talked much about what we would do with Fallout if we ever got the chance to work on it again.

You famously attempted to pitch your post-apocalyptic cRPG to publishers. Can you describe those pitch meetings? How did they go, and what did the publishers have to say in response to your pitch document? Why do you think none of them picked the game up?

We didn’t get very far with any of our pitches. A few introductory phone calls with no interest on the side of the publishers. I’m sure there were many reasons for the lack of interest, not the least of which being that none of our games had really been a hit.